Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Citing big losses, Delta announced they will be adding a $50 fee for checking in a second bag on International flights to try and generate more revenue. They are the first large U.S. airline to impose such a fee, most including Delta have had checked bag fees for Canada/U.S. Domestic flights but none on International flights.

The fee went into effect for tickets purchased after April 22 for travel on or after July 1.

The following passengers will be exempt from the fees:

* First and Business Class passengers * SkyMiles and WorldPerks Elite members (Executive/Platinum/Gold and Silver, including Flying Colonels) * Active duty military members traveling on orders * Passengers who purchased tickets prior to April 22, 2009 * Passengers who are confirmed on a Full Y class Economy ticket.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Due to the outbreak of the Swine Flu in Mexico, Air Transat has apparently canceled all flights to Mexico until June 1. The Air Transat website makes no mention of this but it does appear to be bogged down, probably with everyone checking the status of their flights. Air Transat will operate return flights to bring home Canadian vacationers until May 3.

Air Canada and WestJet are giving customers until May 6 and 8 respectively to change their Mexican travel plans.

Mexican carrier Mexicana is also giving customers until May 6 to change plans with no change fee

">One of the last checked bag fee hold outs from the U.S. (well at least for the first bag, they have had a second checked bag fee for sometime now), Alaska and Horizon Airlines will be charging a a $15 first checked bag fee effective July 7 on all booking made on or after May 1.

As interesting twist to this story though, Alaska will now guarantee that your luggage will be at baggage claim within 25 minutes of arriving at the gate. Should luggage not arrive within the time limit, customers will be entitled to 2,500 Mileage Plan miles or a $25 future flight credit.

Friday, April 24, 2009

If you are flying out Calgary on Continental, Delta or Northwest and connecting to one of their flights that go to London, Manchester or Edinburgh you may be able to earn up to 50,000 bonus miles in their respective frequent flyer programs. All bonus offers until June 30 and require free registration

Continental earns:* 50,000 Bonus Miles on BusinessFirst round-trip tickets purchased and flown in J, D and Z classes* 25,000 Bonus Miles on select BusinessFirst or Economy Class round-trip tickets purchased in A, Y or B classes of service.See the full details and link to the registration page here

At this point I don't believe I will start a Twitter page for IFlyCalgary or my other sites as time does seem to be strecthing thin trying to run the 5 websites and 3 blogs all at once (and now one Twitter page).

Feel free to leave comments, suggestions, questions, rants, raves about the new Twitter page for FFB or anything else for that matter if you like

If you choose to park at Park N Jet, you can earn double Aeroplan miles when you park for at least 4 hours. This offer runs until May 31 and it appears there is no limit to number of times you can earn the bonus miles. Here is what you will earn if you park during the promotional period:

300 Aeroplan Miles for parking one to three consecutive days

500 Aeroplan Miles for parking between four to seven consecutive days

1,000 Aeroplan Miles for parking eight consecutive days or more.

Not a bad offer for all you frequent travellers or not so frequent who are needing to park your car at the airport. Normally I personally use my CAA card for the 20% discount as the discount is worth more to me then the Aeroplan miles (I know, I know, how can I not collect miles? I am going against everything I preach on RewardsCanada.ca) but in this case with the double miles I may actually use my Aeroplan Card instead of my CAA card on my next jaunt.

Monday, April 20, 2009

The Calgary Airport Authority held their Annual General Meeting last week which highlighted the 2008 fiscal year and also looked to the future.

For 2009 $220 Million has been earmarked for infrastructure projects. These include the newest parkade east of the existing parkade, concourse C baggage hall, Preboard screening and airfield improvements.

Despite the economic downturn the planning and design of the 4th runway (parallel to 16/34) east of the present Barlow Trail and the International Facilities Project will continue. Since major construction would still be a few years out (2011-15) the projects could change or be shelved altogether depending on economic conditions.

For a complete overvier, the Calgary Airport Authority has a presentation available on their website, you can download it here (PDF)

Thursday, April 16, 2009

The third daily flight that Northwest adds for the summer season between Calgary and Minneapolis will be operated by Northwest's partner Compass Airlines. This flight will utilize an Embraer E175 whereas previous years it was flown by Northwest's Airbus A319/320 equipment. As a result the route will see a slight decrease in capacity.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Whether you are connecting through YYC with an overnight stay or need to stay at the Delta Calgary Airport for a conference or for any other reason, two frequent flyer programs have bonus miles offers for those stays.

With Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan you can triple miles at the Delta Calgary Airport (or for that matter any Delta hotel in Alberta or B.C.) for stays until May 31, 09. For more details see here.

Also offering Triple miles is Cathay Pacific's Asia Miles program, stay at any Delta Hotel in Canada on an eligible rate until May 31, 09 to earn the bonus miles. See here for more details.

Unfortunately, compared to other hotels, Delta gets a little stingy here with eligible rates as some like AAA/CAA, Seniors rates etc are not eligible to earn miles. So as they say in my main line of business YMMV (Your mileage may vary)

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Currently Calgarians have no direct way of flying to Asia, we must connect through Vancouver, Seattle etc to get to the other side of the Pacific. People living in Japan and Korea, have had direct access to YYC via summer charter flights but not vice-versa. Granted way back when (late 80's early 90's) Canadian Airlines did offer Calgary-Tokyo service briefly and if I recall correctly was only run to keep some of Canadian's landing slots in Tokyo.

Well with the new Japan-Canada bilateral agreement that was signed earlier this month the press release issued by the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism states that a Canadian airline has plans to offer a once weekly summer service from Calgary to Tokyo.

It is too early to tell whether this will come to fruition but I know that the Calgary Airport Authority has been pushing hard to get direct service to Asia and if this route happens it would be a step in the right direction to landing year round daily or near daily service.

The February passenger numbers I posted for YYC on April 1st (see here) have now been corrected on the YYC website. The numbers are still down from 2008 but only by 3.9% instead of the original 4.8%. The total number of passengers now reported is 952,476 with the big change coming on the International side where YYC actually saw a 6% increase instead of the jaw dropping 23% decrease as first reported. On the otherhand Transborder numbers went from being positive at 3.3% to an 8% drop from 2008.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Hyatt today announced enhancements to their Gold Passport frequent guest program and a huge sweepstakes to promote what they are calling 'The Big Welcome'. The grandprize is 365 nights at Hyatt and giveaways of single free nights everyday.

I have teamed up with Hyatt on my other websites to offer even more free nights, I will be giving away free nights to 3 lucky subscribers of the FrequentFlyerBonuses.com 'FFB Roundup' newsletter and 2 lucky subscribers of the RewardsCanada.ca Newsletter.

The good thing is that you can subscribe to both and have a greater chance of winning!

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

A total of 943,416 passengers moved through YYC in February 2009, a decline of 4.8% from the same time last year. This continues the declining number trend seen since September of 2008 which lines right up with the economic issues that Canada and other countries have been faced with. Overall for the first two months of 2009 YYC is down 4.5% from 2008 passenger levels.

The number of International passengers declined significantly in February. With a drop of 23%, YYC only recorded 78,430 International passengers.

Domestic numbers were down by 4.6% to 649,956 and Transborder was the only area to see an increase of passengers to 215,030 (+3.3%)